Friday, November 9, 2007

TrickConTreat 2008 Pictures and Review

(Which I should have posted a month ago, but I did get it posted before the end of the year like I said I would.)

On Saturday, Oct. 6, I spent the day at TrickConTreat, a one-day horror/Halloween convention put on by the same people who work on SoonerCon (and held at Soonercon's current hotel, the Biltmore at I-40 and Meridian).


Attendance was okay, but lower than I expected, even for a first-time, one-day convention. The probable culprit was the OU-Texas game; I'm surprised that the con was scheduled for the same day as a major football game, but it's possible that that was the only date that would work for the hotel, or the staff, or maybe both. Hopefully, they'll be able to avoid having the con on the same weekend as the game next year.

The dealer's room was small but had a good selection of new and used books and movies, t-shirts, toys, artwork (by my friend Kevin Hopkins), and a few other things, and the four authors who were there (Craig Wolf, Steven Wedel, Bill Allen and my friend Bev Hale) had tables in the outer lobby where they were selling and signing books and visiting with congoers. There were also four local clubs/organizations that had display tables: the Oklahoma Space Alliance, the Ghostbusters: Central Oklahoma Division, the Colonial Marines (an "Alien" fan club), and an animal rescue/welfare group whose name escapes me at the moment..

Activities included two tracks of programming, one primarily for adults and one for kids. The adult panels were focused mainly on Halloween themes: horror readings, a history of Halloween, monster make-up, planning parties, decorating pumpkins, and paranormal investigation (which I planned to attend but didn't and I can't remember why). The two panels I did attend were a writers' panel on "What's Happening in Horror and Fantasy" and a panel called "Horror Hosts" with Dr. Fear (Brian Young, a radio and cable horror host from Enid) and Count Gregore (John Ferguson, who became the country's first horror movie host back in May, 1958, and has hosted several local horror movie shows over the years).

There were two other activities that I passed up: a "Zombie Ball" (an "adults-only" costume dance) on Saturday night, and a ghost tour of Ft. Reno in El Reno on Friday evening (which I'm hoping they have again next year because I heard it was a lot of fun and I'm sorry I missed it this year).

Overall, it was a good event and I'm already looking forward to next year (the theme for which is "A Tribute to "B" Movies," and I'm eager to see what sort of movie-related guests and activities they have planned).

(The handful of pictures I took at the con are posted in my Photobucket account, the link to which is in the sidebar on the right.)

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